1 Year Down

This was the scenario a year ago:
I went to bed on March 25th at 12am. At 3 am I started feeling my first contractions. After about 3 hours of rotating from our bed, to Liam's floor, to the shower, I finally woke Dylan up and told him that I thought today was the day. Actually I cried telling him, because I was so scared that it was actually happening. Then after a crazy day Liam was born at 5:05pm.

It is only by the grace of God that we survived this first year. In a way it feels like a blur but in another way it feels like soooo much has happened. There are so many people to thank for helping us get through this year. First off, my amazing husband. He has been the biggest blessing in my life. It's kind of like soldiers that have been at war together. They have this special bond because only they know exactly what it's like to go through what they went through. Only Dylan knows how hard it was those first couple of months and he was a trooper. Then there are our parents. They came to the rescue whenever we needed help. We were actually able to get out of the house because of them. They cleaned, fed us, and loved Liam well. We had lots of help and fun from siblings, our church, college friends, and crusade staff.

It's been a year of ups and downs, but we made it.

Happy Birthday Little Buddy! You make our world a brighter place

gDiapers

I had first heard of gDiapers from my sister-in-law. I thought that they were really cute and I liked the idea of them, but was unsure about trying them. After about a month or so of thinking about them I decided to give it a try. I bought a little 2 pack of the gpants, 6 cloth inserts, and a pack of disposable inserts. The great thing about the disposable inserts is that you can flush, compost, or throw them away. There's no plastic in them so they are much better for the environment. How it works is that you have the outer pants that really just keep everything together. Inside of that is a snap-in plasticish liner that protects the dirty cloths from the pants so you don't have to wash the pants every time you have a dirty diaper. And then you have the option of using the cloth or disposable insert.

So here's how it's been working for me. After the first day or two I realized that I probably should get more gpants because if I put the diaper on wrong it would leak on to the cover and I had to wait to wash it before I used it again. But then Liam got a stomach bug and was pooping about 4 times a day, so I had to retire my 2 cloth diapers for the week because it was getting nasty. Once my other set of diapers came we were good to go. Since I am home during the day I make a wet pail in the washing machine. Just fill it up, put a little Borax in it and toss each dirty cloth insert (after you dump the poop in the toilet) and snap-in liner as the day goes. At the end of the day I just run the washing machine and dry the inserts and we're good to go for the next day. Having the diapers soak all day helps with them not be so smelly and so stains don't set. The only downside I've had is that they aren't as absorbent as normal disposable diapers. I have to change him more regularly because if I don't he starts to get a rash. And he never ever got a rash with disposable diapers. At night I still but a disposable diaper on him because in case he goes to the bathroom, I don't him to wake up. When we go out to places like Church or Disney, I do put the disposables on him so we don't have to deal with that there. Maybe overtime I will be confident in using them out, but I'm not there yet.

So, that's my review of gDiapers. Check them out if you're interested. You can buy them online or at Babies R Us.

Fried Rice

I've been meaning to share this recipe for a while but I kept forgetting. I love asian food but I'm always intimidated by recipes and have never really tried making it at home (except for stir fry). So when I saw this recipe in Martha Stewarts Everyday Food Magazine, I was really excited to try it. It actually was one of the easier meals I've made. It took some time chopping up things and cooking the rice, but I was really pleased with how it came out. Instead of the ground pork I used chicken and shrimp that we had leftover from dinner the previous days. So it really was a cheap meal because I used leftover meat, some leftover rice, and I already had frozen peas and carrots. I look forward to making it again and figuring out whatelse I can serve with it.